Review: 'Fields of Blood' by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong's "Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence" is a study of religion and the history of violence that makes key points but suffers from spurious arguments.

Karen Armstrong's "Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence" is a study of religion and the history of violence that makes key points but suffers from spurious arguments. (By Michael Lionstar, image distributed by Knopf Doubleday)

Troy Jollimore

Spurious arguments mar a study of religion and violence. A review of "Fields of Blood" by Karen Armstrong

People commit atrocities for a complex range of reasons," writes Karen Armstrong. "Yet so indelible is the aggressive image of religious faith in our secular consciousness that we routinely load the violent sins of the twentieth century onto the back of 'religion' and drive it out into the political wilderness."

A widely recognized expert on world religions, Armstrong's new book, "Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence," is a historical survey of human society intended to undermine that indelible image.

But "Fields of Blood" suffers from both a lack of clarity about its own main ideas and a lack of fairness in the way it tries to answer the questions it poses. It is the work of a passionate advocate, and while this will please some readers — mostly those who already share Armstrong's assumptions and biases — it will leave many others deeply unsatisfied.

Indeed, Armstrong never really makes clear just what she is trying to show, or against whom her argument is meant to be directed. (She has, it must be said, a frustrating tendency to argue against ideas that she feels are in the air — attributed to "American commentators and psychiatrists, London taxi drivers and Oxford academics" — rather than addressing specific arguments by particular persons.) Given how long and complex her historical argument is, and how much ground it attempts to cover — the book does its best to encompass the complete history of violence and religion in human society from Gilgamesh to 9/11 and beyond — this lack of initial clarity is damaging. At times she seems satisfied with demonstrating that religion was not the only motivation that caused some conflict or other, as if it were enough to show that people sometimes kill for political reasons, too. In other cases, she attempts to explain away religious motivations altogether. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, this turns out to be difficult. In a discussion of Hamas she writes:

To imagine (that people commit suicide bombings) entirely for God or that they are impelled solely by Islamic teaching is to ignore the natural complexity of all human motivation. … In fact, it is said, the Hamas rank-and-file lived not for "politics, nor ideology, nor religion … but rather an ecstatic camaraderie in the face of death 'on the path of Allah.'"

If "ecstatic camaraderie in the face of death 'on the path of Allah'" does not count as a religious motivation, one must wonder what does. But even admitting to being motivated by religion is not enough to show that you are, in Armstrong's eyes. Rather, you have to be motivated by religion as she understands it — that is, by the kind of loving, pacifist religious traditions she approves of. Violent actions, on the other hand, are motivated not by religion but by misunderstandings or perversions of religion. (And those perversions, moreover, have almost certainly been created by the distorting influences of modernism and secularism.)

Thus, the Puritans of Massachusetts, who justified their violent actions against Native Americans by appealing to the Bible, do not count as having committed religious violence because they were "ignoring Jesus's pacifist teachings." Nor were the Jewish radicals who plotted to destroy the Dome of the Rock acting from a genuinely religious motivation: "Yet far from being inspired by their religious tradition, the militants' conviction violated core teachings of Rabbinic Judaism. The rabbis had repeatedly insisted that violence toward other human beings was tantamount to a denial of God, who had made men and women in his image; murder, therefore, was a sacrilege." And: "When Muslims attack churches and synagogues today, they are not driven to do so by Islam. The Quran commands Muslims to respect the faith of 'the people of the book.'"

Interestingly, Armstrong does not apply this treatment to morally disappointing behavior committed by secularists. The failure of Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke to extend human rights to Native Americans reveals, in her view, "the insidious underside of early modern ideas that still inform our political life." When a religious person treats someone badly, on the other hand, the fault lies not with the religion but with the person; indeed, one who has acted so badly shows that he is not genuinely religious at all. The double standard is clear. Moreover, defended in this manner, the thesis that religion does not inspire violence becomes unfalsifiable: Any act of violence is by definition not performed by a genuinely religious person.

Armstrong's treatment of the terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks is also in this vein: The 9/11 hijackers were not really motivated by religion, because Islam, properly understood, does not permit such actions. "The hijackers themselves certainly regarded the 9/11 atrocities as a religious act but one that bore very little resemblance to normative Islam. A document found in Ata's suitcase outlined a program of prayer and reflection to help them through the ordeal. … The principal imperative of Islamic spirituality is tawhid ("making one"): Muslims truly understand the unity of God only if they integrate all their activities and thoughts. But this document atomizes the mission, dividing it into segments — the "last night," the journey to the airport, boarding the planes, etc. — so that the unbearable whole is never considered. The terrorists were told to look forward to paradise and back to the time of the Prophet — in fact, to contemplate anything but the atrocity they were committing in the present."

The 9/11 hijackers were not being good Muslims, then, because they printed up an itemized schedule. Whatever else we might say about Armstrong's interpretation, it surely ignores that for many, the main concern about fundamentalism is precisely that it encourages people to "look forward to paradise and back to the time of the Prophet," and so to devalue and be willing to sacrifice real life in the present. (I should point out that Armstrong also suggests that the real culprit, at least in terms of the 9/11 hijackers' education, was not religion but science: "Unused to allegoric and symbolic thought, their scientific education inclined them not to skepticism but toward a literalist reading of the Quran that diverged radically from traditional Muslim exegesis.")

Armstrong's insistence on repeatedly imposing the same interpretation on the facts, regardless of the historical contingencies and even of what the actors themselves tell us about their motivations, undermines her stated intention to deal with the relevant issues in all their complexity. Ultimately her position seems as simpleminded as that of her opponents: They say religion is always to blame; she says it never is. Meanwhile, the reader's trust in her as a fair and objective guide is gradually but inexorably eroded.

This is unfortunate since, as it happens, she has a few very good points to make. She is correct to claim that a great many religious people are peaceful and admirable, that many of these people find their religions to be significant sources of inspiration and of moral support, and that Muslims, in particular, have suffered from an unfair perception of their religion as deeply and intractably violent. And she is correct as well to observe that simply blaming religion obscures the responsibility that wealthier, more secular countries bear for creating and maintaining conditions that provoke violent responses from people who feel they have no alternative. "Western policy in the developing world had often adopted a double standard so that we failed to treat others as we would wish to be treated," Armstrong points out. "We must deplore any action that spills innocent blood or sows terror for its own sake. But we must also acknowledge and sincerely mourn the blood that we have shed in the pursuit of our national interests."

Even here, where I am most sympathetic to Armstrong, I am unable to assent completely. She seems to hold that tolerance — an admirable ideal — generally requires those critical of particular religious practices to keep these to themselves, and to hold them responsible if their expressed opinions meet with a violent response. But it is important to keep the cases separate: Violence as a response to violence is sometimes understandable, but violence as a response to speech — disagreement, rational criticism, or whatever form speech may take — is deplorable and unjustifiable, and ought not to be tolerated.

Armstrong also ignores an inconvenient question for her account: How much of the oppressive political behavior she condemns is itself religiously motivated? The United States' irresponsible conduct in the Middle East and elsewhere is indeed largely motivated by considerations of national interest. But the double standards that prompt the American public to tolerate torture, the killing of innocents, and other actions they would view as deeply evil if committed by other nations cannot be understood except in terms of American moral exceptionalism; and that concept, in turn, cannot be extricated from the peculiar nature of American religion. Would the American public have been as supportive of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan if these had been Christian nations? The same point applies to domestic oppression, here and elsewhere: It would be absurd to claim that the oppressive treatment of homosexuals in the United States, or in Muslim nations, had nothing to do with the religious views that prevail and guide politics in those countries.

"If we are to meet the challenge of our time and create a global society where all people can live together in peace and mutual respect, we need to assess our situation accurately," Armstrong writes. "We cannot afford oversimplified assumptions about the nature of religion or its role in the world." This is an admirable sentiment. If only "Fields of Blood" were not itself guided by deeply oversimplified assumptions, it might have been a very useful book in helping us face "the challenge of our time."

Troy Jollimore's third book of poetry, "Syllabus of Errors," will be published in 2015.